Fox disgusts me. Obama should have walked out. His adept handling of Baier reflected a lifetime of experience dealing with White folks who can’t muster an ounce of respect for a Black man of superior intelligence and authority.

Fox News’ Bret Baier interrupted President Obama so many times during Wednesday’s interview that Newsweek described the encounter as a “interrupt-a-thon.” – Huffington Post

Wwhile being interviewed by Bill O’reilly about the Presidential interview, Bret Baier said he tried to “stick it” to the President. What? How about just interviewing him…why do you have to try and “stick it” to him? That was nothing short of disgusting. There is absolutely NO recognition and respect toward the office of President by the people at Fox news…who claim to be journalistgs. Fox news had no intention of questioning Obama on issues, its goal was to try and make him look bad and then claim he couldn’t answer anything. Simple as that. Bret was the perfect person to interview him because the President would expect and be ready for it from Hannity and O’reilly…maybe not from Baier.

Profoundly disrespectful. I don’t directly see the racism involved. I think (hope) it shows instead the Republicanism of Faux News. At any rate, Fox would show a modicum of integrity if it public apologizes, puts Baier on unpaid leave, and says if he ever does it again, he’ll be fired.

I realize that it was a series of sewn together video clips (from the same interview), but in a five-hour interview I can’t imagine that someone would be so brazen as to interrupt like Baier did EVEN ONCE.

I think the people of cultural influenace shoud stick together boycott fox tv and all of it’s sponsors… that will put thinkgs right back into focus for them… what they are doing the our country is horrible, this most recent derespect of the President of the United States is really opening up pandora’s box…. What next?

I’ll take a somewhat contrary view. The President of the United States isn’t royalty. Tough questioning of the President can be appropriate, even to the point of interrupting him if he’s not being responsive to the question.

The best interviews of George W. Bush happened when reporters had the guts to aggressively follow up. Take a look at this interview with Irish TV:

Bret Baier went wrong because he was the one putting out misinformation. Proving once again that Faux News is not a journalistic enterprise.

It’s clear that the Irish TV interviewer is racist and that Amy Goodman is a racist. Helen Thomas is the ultimate racist for her disrepectful questioning of GWB. They should all be fired for their blatant racist attitudes and interviewing methods. The evidence is so obvious than any reporter who interrupts any interviewee is a racist. They are all racists. It is clear that all behavior by all people is motivated solely by race and that race is the determining factor in all human interaction. Race Race Race Race Race……..

I also think the questioning was disrespectful, and like Richard, I don’t see the “racism” here.

Nevertheless, I have a difficult time taking you seriously, Cliff, when you cheered on other disrespectful acts committed against President Bush a few years ago. Disrespect is disrespect, and both sides are guilty of acting inappropriately.

It’s not really race-related, in my opinion; rather, Cliff and others see the world in racial terms. This can be appropriate when one acknowledges that racist individuals see the world in racial terms, and so their indirectly-associated views must be analyzed in that context. I just don’t see any evidence of racism in Bret Baier.

I think that Baier is just disrespectful, and that Fox News intentionally attempts to obfuscate. Consider what Brit Hume said about the interview later: that Obama hadn’t provided a satisfactory response about the double-counting of Medicare savings. Of course it wasn’t satisfactory! For one, a satisfactory answer can’t be provided if one isn’t given a satisfactory amount of time in which wot provide it. In addition, Fox News cast members aren’t about to be satisfied by anything that doesn’t agree with the views of their meal ticket. With few exceptions, they’ve evidenced that time and time again.

I will never watch fox news again.I will never watch fox programming again. That interview was so disrespectful. He’s the US President and that should have never been allowed to happen. Fox News people – You all are assholes!

This same analysis of interviews was done a year and half ago, except the tables were turned.
Obama had softball after softball “interviews” if you can call these fanzine kneeling to the Obama God by Harry Smith, Charlie Gibson, et al. Then when these same reporters interviewed Palin, it was an oral exam of world events, political theory and history. I am fine with the questions Palin got and the treatment she got, if all the other candidates were given the same treatment. Which they were not.

This story is an old story. The only difference is that this time YOUR guy got the rough treatment so all of a sudden you notice and get indignant about it. But if it is the other guy, then well, it was a good interview.

So the revealing bias here is not Fox News’ interview, but your reaction to it.

That has to be the most amazing presidential interview in history. I don’t know why the White House was angry about that. Clinton was brilliant and answered questions I’ve been wondering about for years! Can you imagine Bush trying to pull something like that off? He would have cut off the conversation and blamed it on the phone company.

That has to be the most amazing presidential interview in history. I don’t know why the White House was angry about that. Clinton was brilliant and answered questions I’ve been wondering about for years!

Agreed. I remember listening to that interview live and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Amy Goodman’s questions were tough and direct, but I personally thought Clinton got the better of her. Reading over the transcript 10 years later, I still think he got the better of her.

Baier has been a Fox attack dog for a while now. Pretty aggressive questioning for Obama (which is OK). He should be able to handle it. As long as everyone is clear on Baiers’ angle. He did an interview with Rumsfeld a few years ago here: About 2:15

One has to take into account the manner of the answers as well as the questions when comparing Palin interviews to Obama interviews. Palin got criticized after-the-fact for her inability to answer questions which, frankly, it doesn’t even seem necessary to ask Obama. Still, there’s danger (and bias) in assuming that it isn’t necessary.

Regardless, if Obama is asked the same question as Palin and he gives a clear, well-formulated response, those who don’t like Obama will think the press is pussyfooting, while Palin’s apparent inability to provide direct responses will be attributed to the cruelty of the liberal MSM.

I agree with you, Brewski, that there’s some selective indignation, here. But I’ve watched Palin’s interviews, and I don’t think they really compare with this Baier-Hume one-two punch. I would welcome an example of a Palin interview that was quite so harshly orchestrated.

Maybe “get[ting their] money’s worth” means satisfying their corporate sponsors who want Fox to gut the president’s credibility so that they can get more sponsorship in the future. Maybe it means that Obama refused to be on their show until they offered a contribution to someone’s campaign or something. Maybe Baier just thinks in terms of money. Maybe it was a poorly-placed figure of speech. Who knows.

I agree, but you have to give Amy credit for asking really good questions without any preparation whatsoever. I love the part where she has to run over and turn down the music with Clinton wondering if he’s being ignored.

James, show me any example of any Republican that got treatment from CBS like this:
All quotes from CBS’s Harry Smith”

where did you learn to love?

Along with the role of commander-in-chief and leader of the free world, Barack Obama would be First Dad. So, yes, there would be a swing set and, yes, there would be a dog.

The First Couple has made being present in their children’s lives a top priority. The world can wait til’ after Sasha and Malia’s soccer or basketball game.

It is really interesting because they – he really wanted to make sure fatherhood was paid attention to this weekend. So they had this big barbecue and town meeting on Friday. You saw that he took the girls out for ice cream on Saturday.

Now you are just being plain ridiculous. Let me know when your bag of N2O is finished so we can get back to reasonable discussion, including, for example, the fact that Palin, indeed, could not remember the name of a single newspaper she read regularly.

President Osama is such a WIMP that he couldn’t even handle a little FOX in the hen house. He wears grandma jeans, bowls like a sissy, golfs even worse … and hasn’t a bit of machismo in him. Moochelle has more muscles than this skinny manchild! Pathetic president who pouts and promises with pomp and circumstance! King Hussein Osama and Queen Moochelle all Drama!

Wow. I can see why conservative pundits are so successful amongst the masses. With such a talent with words, it’s no wonder the silent majority fawns after the Limbaugh way. It’s like gangsta rap mixed with McDonald’s, but more whiney.

Keep up the sloganizing, boys. Nothing like creative names to replace cogent criticism.

President Obama makes a mistake by dignifying Fox News with his presence. The President should be above this cellar dwelling journalism. His presence gives that type of journalism credibility and that only lowers the bar some more.

Simple question Dwight. For if Obama were smart, he would not go on Fox, but he did, so he isn’t. It’s a mistake in Joe’s opinion, and I asked the question, and there was nothing confirmed.

I don’t think Obama made a mistake by going on Fox, see if Fox is a “stupid” network, then someone of Obama’s perceived intelligence could easily handle them and their ways and questions, but he didn’t, so he isn’t.

Simple question? Try “stupid question.” Try “disingenuous bait.” I don’t recall anyone asserting that Fox News was “stupid”; more that it was devious or absurd.

And it’s a matter of opinion whether or not Obama handled them well. You, having a vested interest in seeing him as an idiot, don’t exactly have the most trusted opinion out there on the issue of Obama’s intelligence. It’s like asking a biblical literalist for his explanation for the existence of dinosaur bones.

Furthermore, you should understand the political nature of Washington well enough to know that it would be more stupid to NOT go on Fox. Republicans (and the Fox News noise machine) are expert at giving their opponents two options: bad and worse. There’s enough people out there (like you) who want to hold Obama’s every action against him that the Republicans have plenty of ammo in that arena. If he had refused, you would have called him a coward or something akin to it—and you know it.

A huge success? I’ll take the bet, dimes to dollars. No matter what he does now, what has happened to his party makes him more of miserable failure than Bush was. I am invested in nothing but the truth.

I predicted the sell out of progressives by this corporate stooge before he was elected, when the like of most here had tinglings going up their thighs. Go back and read yourselves, it is total humiliation.

I am with Rahm, the far left end of the progressive spectrum are “fucking retards.”

Can’t handle the truth huh? I am just calling it as I saw it a long time ago. It’s in the record. You both have egg on your faces still supporting this stooge. Well, not sure about Dwigh,t he is probably not a 20%er like you are Jim.

The sad thing is you harbor the classic cut off your nose to spite your face mindset – you would rather see Obama fail, and suffer the consequences, than see him succeed and and enjoy the fruits. Indeed, you have turned into a rather bitter person … too bad.

Absurd, Obama has cut off your progressive heads, and crapped down your neck. What is truly sad is that you still support the man even after he has done this.

What is the reasoning behind it? You remind me of the people who supported Lenin in Russia, who stated that anyone who could not see the inevitability of the mans greatness and legacy was bitter. Well they were right, he became great, a great destroyer, who led the way for Stalin, enabling him in his horror show that ensued.

Are you referring to the momentum that led to the Democrats losing 60 seats in the House last election? They lost centuries of seniority (for real) and most all committee chairs. If things go badly it will be blamed on the Democrats for their failed policies, if it goes well it will be perceived that since Obama caved to Republican demands the credit goes to them for forcing his hand.

ALL bills originate in the House, and any bills are brought forward by the committee chairs, so anything the Democrats want to do will have to go through the Republican sieve.
Game over.

Why did you not see what was coming with the Obama sellout, yet I did, and stated so long before he was elected. The clues were everywhere. Brezezinski as Obama’s foreign policy mentor was the “tell”. CFR psychopath, Obama is a stooge.

You would have expected there to have been this momentum with Democrats holding super majorities in Congress and in control of the executive, instead, we see the Republicans in a strong majority in the House after the midterms, in contention in the Senate, and the Democrat executive as a lame duck 2 years into his term.

If there is any momentum it is with the Tea Party, for the Democrats it is a downward spiral, brought about by the Democrat party being sucked into the political black hole vortex, by it’s own lack of gravitas.

Nothing like slinging an anchor to the problems by electing a stooge like Obama.

The advent of Bush and his wars and housing crisis were aided and abetted by Democrats, Barney Fwank, Rahmbo, you know we have had a great deal of collusion winding up where we are. Bush being an accelerator, nobody refused the funding or stopped spending. The Tea Party is the oligarchy’s Tar Baby.

I see this as nothing but carping. The utter uselessness of the Democrat party is the real problem. They have no spine, limited intelligence, zero cunning, and of course, are strapped with the far left wing of the party who are “fucking retards”.

Going back to your Lenin example, I suppose it was an inept opposition to Stalinism that was the real problem? No way we can blame the guy rolling the bulldozer over the country. We have to blame his opposition for not patching up the destruction left in his wake.

Of course, that’s not meant to propose that either side is NOT driving the bulldozer; just to point out the utter idiocy of placing all Republican misdeeds in the hands of the “uselessness of the Democrat party.”

It’s like blaming the police for not getting to the scene soon enough to stop the crime—therefore they were the ones who committed the crime. Sorry, Glenn, but the problem is the criminals—and people like you who put forth every effort to decrease people’s faith in corrective measures and in so doing diminish or entirely corrupt those measures’ chances for success.

It’s like all those Republicans griping about earmarks even as they loaded them into every Democrat bill they could stand the smell of, and filibustered those they couldn’t. Great strategy—get what you want while making your ideological betters look incompetent and/or immoral because exigency and rules that allow you to force incompetency are on your side.

Another word for “cunning” is “debauched.” At least we agree that the Democrat party loses out much of the time because they won’t bend their morals to defend their moral superiority, like Repubs seem all-too-willing to do. “Cunning” is not always a good thing. In a government that’s supposed to be transparent, “cunning” is just a nice way of masking deceptiveness. Republicans have that coming out the wazoo. Some Democrats, too. But in the context of your nonsense, it’s the Republican “cunning” that’s most damning of itself. Too bad the people are too blinded by outrage ideologies to notice it.

In addition the opposition has no responsibility to do anything the majority party wants, ever.

Aside from the obvious problems with referring to the minority party as “the opposition,” this statement is not true. They do have a responsibility to do what the majority part wants when it’s the right thing.

They’re not concerned with that, however. Punking the Democrats is more important than looking after the state of the nation.

“Are you referring to the momentum that led to the Democrats losing 60 seats in the House last election?”

Good chunk of those wins came from just 3 states, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. Yea their was sputtering of loses in other places but not enough to count for much.

Also republicans won the very high of end of seats possible for the percentage of the popular vote they won( 52% ). Or in other words they slightly tipped over the top to win in many many close races in a year with depressed voter turnout(mostly on the democrat side of the voting block).

Its also telling the places where they didn’t win, or in some cases the initiatives they lost on. Florida passed initiatives changing their state constitution to add fair redistricting rules, California tossed the 2/3’s budget requirement to pass a budget, Colorado voted down by 5 to 1 margin the definition of a person amendment. Then California didn’t lose a single house seat to the republicans, and in their state house the dems gained seats, to say nothing of the dems taking every single state wide elected position(gov, US senate, AG).

“If there is any momentum it is with the Tea Party”

Their isn’t any momentum, its just the same extremist 20%’ers that have always been around. Just ask Joe beaten by a write in Miller, Sharen second amendment angle, Ken force her to have daddy’s baby Buck, Christin’O no mas..**** ‘Donnell, Tim amendments after #10 don’t count Pawlenty, etc how much that “momentum” helped them.

It’s amazing that their are people that still think the republicans won the last election, really you should take a wider view of what was gained and lost in the election.

Dwight that is not politics, and your expectatiion is naive. Look at how parliamentary sytems work in other modern countries and you will get the drift. If you expect the opposition to support what the majority wants then you will be a loser more often than not.

What is “the right thing” is a subjective analysis.

Yeah I know Jim, Rahm Emanual is one complelling guy, he is the one who called the loony left “fucking retards”. I don’t like him much, but tend to agree with him.

Ronald 60 seats is 60 seats, and if such is sputter, they will take it I’m sure. Whatever anyone says, pretty good for first time out. If you are prone to Democrat denial and false reasoning and expectation, there is going one hell of another ass kicking up ahead.

It’s this kind of play that is going to lead to the extinction of the Democrat Party. Nothing more will be needed. The Republicans just keep doing what they are doing, nothing, and the people will see Democrats for what they are. Right out of Sam Adams play book. The Tea Party influence will only increase

They won the rust belt on a jobs message, so far they have cancelled 30,000 to 40,000 jobs worth of rail projects paid for by the Federal dime, next their going to start attacking public employee unions and committing to massive state layoff’s, ohh yes I see big electoral victory in that… not!

However will the republicans hold onto seats in Florida without loopy mushroom shaped spaghetti district lines. After Jerry Brown balances California’s budget with sound governing and Texas balances their budget by bankrupting every hospital in the state by opting out of medicaid how will the rest of the Nation view the different approaches.

To say nothing of 2 more years of demographic changes, more minority’s and young voters replacing dying older voters. Arizona will be a minority-majority state soon, Texas will follow suit in 2016-17ish area.

The republicans loses in the west in 2010 are just beginning of a greater political realignment.

Everything is a product of subjective analysis—including your arguments. What’s your point? If you can assert an argument about the way things are, I can just as rightly assert an argument about the way they ought to be.

So tell me how my assertion is incorrect. In the real world people steal from each other but it doesn’t mean we don’t have a responsibility to not steal from each other. Bad behavior is not its own excuse, standardized or no. I’m not “naive” in my expectations; I know that they are unlikely to be followed; I’m just willing to assert the truth rather than subject my perspective to poor standards in order to make a bitter point.

So you might as well just admit that I’m right about the idiocy of the political chess game and move on. But you’re too afraid of impugning the Republicans for any reason, ever, as it might conflict with your pet topic of impugning the Democrats. So instead you focus on criticizing politics generally and criticizing the Democrats specifically. And when someone like me rightly criticizes the perspectives you hold which contribute to the stupidity of the system you criticize, rather than recognize your complicity in the failure of the very thing you criticize the failure of, you prefer to expend what little power you do have telling people fighting against what you profess to hate that they should shut up.

“a good starting point”
“more straight forward”
“bold ideas”
“shows great promise to make substantial improvements in the state’s budgetary health — both in the short run and over the long term”
“We think this makes sense”

Rico,
I have to admit I am impressed that Brown proposed such measures as reducing pay to state employees by 8-10%, cut 20% of state support for public universities, slash California’s welfare budget in half and dismantle many programs that help the needy.

If a Republican had offered up such a budget he would be caled a Nazi Racist Teabagger Murderer.

James,
There isnt one shred of proof in this at all. What it proves is what he said which is that he doesn’t like the NAACP as a group. That is not even close to saying he has anything against black people, like his own son. So you are saying he doesn’t love his own son? You got proof of that too?

If he didn’t like NOW as a group would that mean that he was a sexist?

Does one have to like all self-appointed groups to prove that one is not a bigot?

You have previously accused me of being racist for merely bringing up the subject of race. The dude here did not need to bring his Jamaican son into the discussion, but chose to do so. By your own standard, then, he is racist. The video is just frosting on the cake.

James, you called him racist for not liking the NCAA as an organization. So according to you he is a racist and doesn’t love his son. So if he doesn’t like NOW as an organization, according to your logic he doesn’t love his wife.